Fed. Judge Puts Halt to Abuse of Justice in Wisc. ‘John Doe’ Raids

For the last three years a Democrat affiliated Milwaukee County District Attorney has been engaged in a political jihad of sorts, using “secret subpoenas” and illegally invading homes and offices of a wide range of conservatives and Republicans in an “investigation” into collusion between activist groups and Wis. Gov. Scott Walker’s re-election campaign. At last, a federal judge has ordered that the illicit probe be halted on First Amendment grounds.

Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, two of his assistant DAs, and Special Prosecutor Francis Schmitz, launched a politically motivated investigation into whether or not Eric O’Keefe and his group the Wisconsin Club for Growth–a conservative activist group–illegally coordinated with Gov. Walker and other Republicans during the 2011 and 2012 recall election campaigns. The case was titled the “John Doe” investigation because all the accusations were made anonymously, many of the subpoenas were hidden behind a “secrecy rule”–meaning those accused could not even see them–and many of the proceedings were hidden from the public in secret court proceedings.

Also, as the wide-ranging search warrants were served, many of the accused were held and denied access to their lawyers. The raids were para-military styled, implemented in pre-dawn hours, and swept up not only business records, but personal records along with those of family members.

At last, a federal judge has ruled that this whole Democrat jihad amounts to a witch-hunt that is in violation of the rule of law. Worse, that it is drenched in violations of the rights of the accused not the least of which is their First Amendment rights.

The judge held that the actions of the out of control prosecutors either disregarded the law or purposefully misinterpreted it to fit their political aims of destroying conservative activist groups and undermining elected Republican officials.

In a 26-page decision, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa in Milwaukee demanded that the Democrat prosecutors immediately end the illicit investigation, return all property, and then destroy any copies of that personal information.

“The (Wisconsin Club for Growth and its treasurer) have found a way to circumvent campaign finance laws, and that circumvention should not and cannot be condemned or restricted. Instead, it should be recognized as promoting political speech, an activity that is ‘ingrained in our culture,” Judge Randa wrote.

The judge also told the Club for Growth that it no longer had any responsibility to cooperate with the investigators or the County officials involved.

Randa revealed that the Democrat investigators weren’t just looking into the Club for Growth and its “coordination” with Waker, but had expanded the probe to include nearly every Republican official elected in that period and a multitude of other conservative leaning activist group.

The probe had also expanded to every corner of the state and many subpoenas were even issued to groups outside the state.

“The plaintiffs have been shut out of the political process merely by association with conservative politicians,” wrote Randa, a 1992 George H.W. Bush appointee. “This cannot square with the First Amendment and what it was meant to protect.”

The Democrat attackers claimed that because these conservative groups had advocated for the same things that Walker and other GOP candidates did, that somehow must mean there was illegal “coordination” going on in violation with these groups tax status.

But Randa disagreed saying “this interpretation is simply wrong.”

“O’Keefe and the Club obviously agree with Governor Walker’s policies, but coordinated ads in favor of those policies carry no risk of corruption because the Club’s interests are already aligned with Walker and other conservative politicians,” Randa wrote. “Such ads are meant to educate the electorate, not curry favor with corruptible candidates.”

The judge went on to say that the prosecutors were improperly attempting to transform issue advocacy into direct coordination. “If correct, this means that any individual or group engaging in any kind of coordination with a candidate or campaign would risk forfeiting their right to engage in political speech,” he wrote.

Judge Randa’s original cease order on this case had a technical problem and was set aside, but today, May 8, the judge went back and reiterated his decision with the technicality corrected and the “John Doe” probe is once again outlawed.

Milwaukee should be ashamed of the partisan, left-wing liars that pretend to be county prosecutors there. And good on Judge Randa for seeing the truth.

I’d been following this and I couldn’t believe this was possible – an investigation that violates all common sense, anonymous accuasations, hidden subpeonas, everything behind closed doors. Just didn’t and doesn’t seem right.

But then I noticed that even if nothing came out of this that could damage Walker, the investigaton itself serves the purposes of the left. That was brought home by the Washington Post. The paper ran a story in January about Walker, the headline being:

The article began by stating that Walker….”is dealing with the fallout of two criminal investigations at home that could complicate his move to the national stage. One is ongoing, and although the other is closed and found no wrongdoing by Walker, it has the potential to embarrass him.”
There’s nothing damaging in the article but it still accomplishes its’ purpose.
It introduces Walker to a national audience and provides character assassination by innuendo. A tactic the left is well known for using. Just ask Palin.
I’m happy to see that the witch hunt has been shut down.

JWH

Sounds like the next stop for the Club for Growth folks is the local bar disciplinary committee.

Lawrence Westlake

Somewhere Tom DeLay is nodding his head in a combination of wistfulness and contempt. Ted Stevens’ ghost, too. Scooter Libby. Next on the list could be Michael Grimm. There have been many others. Still more to come, too. Speaking of which, one of the amazing things about the cocooned blogosphere and its country club WASP demographics is that even today this sort of thing “surprises” a lot of erstwhile conservatives, as if it’s actually any surprise that the Party of Tammany Hall, the unions, New Orleans and Chicago engages in these mafia-style tactics. Welcome to political reality. Keep it all in mind when you’re thinking about staying home and not voting in major elections.

Brucehenry

I’m pretty sure you don’t know what “erstwhile” means, lol.

Walter_Cronanty

I’m pretty sure you’re right. Bad demographics = Idiot.

warnertoddhuston

Heh, maybe erstwhile Republicans now confirmed conservatives, if more apt.

Walter_Cronanty

Does he consider us [Brucehenry and Chico excluded] “country club WASPs” who are really “erstwhile conservatives”? I think I’ve been to a country club twice in my 60+ years – thought they both were a wee bit stuffy. I could never figure that [among most other things Larry cuts, pastes and posts] out.

warnertoddhuston

The only time I’ve ever been allowed into a country club is when some politician wanted me to cover his event there!

jim_m

The slav in me is offended at the suggestion.

Walter_Cronanty

Yeah, when, and where, I grew up there were 3 ethnic groups: Blacks, Whites and Hillbillies. Then I moved up north to a much larger city, with many ethnic groups. I then found out I was a [hated] WASP. All my family of “WASPS” were coal miners or descendants of coal miners. I guess I should “check my privilege.”

jim_m

Nobody has asked me to do that yet, but the first person who does is likely to check into the ER afterward.

Commander_Chico

I am a country club Mestizo-Celt. Or, lets just say Mestizo.

jim_m

Perhaps he was confused with “ersatz”.

Jwb10001

Erstwhile was today’s word on the word of the day toilet paper at Westlake’s place.

jim_m

This was little more than leftist projection embodied in a government action. This was abuse of power for the purpose of intimidating the opposition and with the ultimate desire of putting people in prison for their political beliefs.

LiberalNightmare

Isnt it strange that the more power people give to liberals the less liberal they become.

Sadly, the rest of us are getting what the schmuck voted for (and will vote for again),

Commander_Chico

The difference between Chico and you chumps is that you put your faith in something called “the Republican Party,” while Chico knows TPTB are playing all of us with this sham “democracy.”

The two parties are a tag team slamming all of us to the mat.

jim_m

The difference is that you keep voting for the destruction of this country while drawing benefits and demanding that those benefits never be reduced. And funny it is to read your laments regarding democracy when you have openly supported a socialist/military dictatorship here. Your only complaint is that you are unsatisfied with the scraps your masters are giving you, whereas the rest of us are demanding that we should not have to serve any master but ourselves.

Commander_Chico

I know military benefits are a sore point with you. You try serving in the military for 25 years, that’s a lot of shit you have to eat. I earned those bennies, Goddamn it.

No not at all. I believe that many people deserve their military benefits and more. However, you have openly declared that you served solely to obtain those benefits, that you did not join to serve your country but only for the financial and other benefits that you hoped to gain.

Furthermore, you have declared that using the military to defend the interests of the Untied States as defined by the Commander in Chief, is a despicable act and that anything which in any way endangers the life of a soldier (like exposure to combat or a war zone) is a betrayal of that soldier. Sorry, but being a soldier means actually being a soldier, whether you joined for that purpose or not.

Yes, you did the minimum to earn your benes. I have never denied your right to them. However, I stand fast in my assertion that you served without honor and that you deserve no respect for your service as it was bought and paid for and you have received in full measure that which you joined for. You never served for me and mine. You served for yourself and no one else. Were it otherwise I would respect your service. As it is I cannot.

Retired military

I need to do Part 2 since proof of Dems calling republicans racist have outstripped the capacity of a DISCUS reply.

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Frank James NPR “Social scientists who have studied voters have found that voter participation rises when voters are emotionally engaged,” he noted. “For some voters, suggestions that some of the opposition to Obama and his policies is more than just honest disagreement – and is indeed racially based – could help do the trick.”

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Pelosi tweet – Over 50% of food stamp recipients are people of color. The GOP Budget takes food out their mouths

WAPO columnist Jonathan Capehart “republicans extolled the wonders and the virtues and the beauty of slavery,”

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Dem Ill Gov Quinn “Black republicans are like Jews (who) collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, helping them to round up their own people in the hopes they’d be the last to go.”

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Ed Schultz MSNBC

“So the president goes to the other side of the world and that’s what he gets asked about, racism. How sad is that? But you know what? When you’re the first, you always get picked on. And I have to tell you that this president, I think, is very bold, very strong, very well guided, and has a moral compass. And there’s absolutely no question about it that he has been picked on because of the color of his skin. And there’s no doubt that he has been called many names by conservative talkers in America, many names. He has been targeted, he has been obstructed. And I think that the way this president has been treated empowers jokers like this (alluding to Sterling), like, well, the government does it, we all see it. I guess we can say whatever the hell we want and act however we want. That’s my take on it. I, I, I think that this is a scab that’s been ripped off again and it’s a scab that really, undoubtedly is gonna happen again and again on America. But I believe, I pin this attitude that we have in society being inflamed by right-wing talkers who hate this president, that embolden people such as this guy to go on and act disrespectful against society.”

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Dorian Warren, Columbia professor “There’s a distinction we should make between racist words and speech, and racist practices and policies. We should be focused on the policies and the racial impact of policies that those Republican leaders frankly stand for,”

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MSNBC’s Touré “Some of these folks who own these NBA teams, and this is breaking news, Ari. Some of them are not the most savory folks. Some of them are bankrolling anti-gay marriage initiatives. Some of them got rich off of fracking. Some of them are Russian oligarchs.”

New York magazine Jonathan Chait, “America’s unique brand of ideological anti-statism is historically inseparable…from the legacy of slavery.”

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Theatlantic.com

Dem Rep Bennie Thompson told a radio show. “That Mitch McConnell would have the audacity to tell the president of the United States … that ‘I don’t care what you come up with we’re going to be against it.’ Now if that’s not a racist statement I don’t know what is.”

For good measure, Thompson added that Clarence Thomas “doesn’t like black people, he doesn’t like being black.”

I never declared I served just for the bennies. I also served to bang foreign women and protect America from the Evil Empire.

Yes, I don’t believe in squandering young people in foolish adventures that have nothing to do with the interests of the USA, even if the president or vice-president thinks profit margins for Halliburton and oil contracting opportunities are an interest.

jim_m

I do not believe that troops are cannon fodder. I believe that great care should be used in deploying our troops. I believe that all too often that the civilian government hamstrings the military and prevents it from doing its job properly.

However, unlike you I believe that the fact that civilian leadership s flawed is not an excuse to denounce every single use of the military and that people in the military should have the expectation that the military will be used.

The difference between you and I is that you believe that EVERY use of the military is foolish and I only believe that SOME of those uses are foolish.

jim_m

My warped view of military service? By that you apparently mean that someone entering into the military should not have the expectation that since the military is historically called upon to participate in wars, that they might be called upon to do the same. Sorry, but only a moron like you enters into the service thinking that it is some vocational training program and that there will never be any expectation to serve the country.

Not everyone is a worthless parasite like you. Not everyone entering the military is a coward like you.

jim_m

My warped view of military service? By that you apparently mean that someone entering into the military should not have the expectation that since the military is historically called upon to participate in wars, that they might be called upon to do the same. Sorry, but only a moron like you enters into the service thinking that it is some vocational training program and that there will never be any expectation to serve the country.

Not everyone is a worthless parasite like you. Not everyone entering the military is a coward like you.

Retired military

Actually you are the one that uses Option D. The retired mlitary guy.

As for your benefits, I am not saying you earned them but at least some (if not the vast majority) of those 25 years you claim you did was in the reserves. That is why you keep whining about not being eligible for them until you are 65.

Commander_Chico

Actually it’s age 60 when I can collect, let’s not make things worse than they actually are.

Retired military

The diffeeence between Chico and the rest of us is we have brains and we can answer questions straightforwardly instead of ru

“As I said before, try answering what people say, and not try to put words in others’ mouths, debate goes better” – Chico, Famed Wizbangblog poster

How about practising what you preach Chico.

1 Oprah,the Lamestream media, Reid, Pelosi, and other major dems have called people racist simply because they oppose Obama’s

policies. Yet when they oppose those same policies when espoused by Bill, Hillary. Reid, Pelos, Gore, Kerry, etc etc they weren’t considered racist then by Oprah, etc etc (I don’t know isn’t good enough)

Do you feel that it is because the left is just playing the race card?

2. People were called racist anarchist terrorists when they tried to delay Obamacare yet Al Franken who did the same thing wasn’t called Racist. Do you feel that it is because he is a democrat and the people doing the call just playing the race card because that is all they have?

3. People were called racist anarchist terrorist when they called for the delay of all or part of Obamacare and Obama who is unconstitutionally doing the same thing is not called a racist anarchist terrorist. Do you feel that it is because he is a democrat and the people doing the calling are just playing the race card because that is all they have?

4. Chico stated ” They (duck dynasty guys) were clean shaven before they pitched the TV show.” yet you provided zero proof of this statement. Please do so now.

Examples of statements 1, 2, and 3 (since you reject the premise)

Salon writer Joan Wals

It’s simply stunning: Longtime Republican imagemaker Ailes figured out how to make sure that our twice-elected Democratic president, backed by a coalition that represents an emerging, multiracial America, must periodically be checked and hopefully shamed by a representative of the angry right-wing white male minority that barely considers him a legitimate leader…

O’Reilly and Ailes and their viewers see this president as unqualified and ungrateful, an affirmative action baby who won’t thank us for all we’ve done for him and his cohort. The question was, of course, deeply condescending and borderline racist. Obama has been afforded “so much opportunity”? What about O’Reilly, who pretends he’s a working-class son of Levittown, Long Island, when he’s actually the kid of an accountant who grew up in Westbury and went to private high school and university

]——-

Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore: “This is still a pretty conservative country and people are upset about the policies in Washington and they don’t think the politicians are listening.”

Host Chris Matthews: “Okay, I think, I think some of the people are upset because we have a black President.”

Talking about the town hall protests against ObamaCare on MSNBC’s Hardball, August 11, 2009.

If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred, a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered, self-rationalizing refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of democracy, or the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public support.”

— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Countdown, March 22, 2010.

“The Republican Party in this country has been running on hate and division for the last 50 years….What black person, gay guy or girl, immigrant or Muslim American in their right mind would vote for the Republican Party? They might as well hang a sign around their neck saying, ‘I hate myself.’”

— Fill-in host Cenk Uygur on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, August 26, 2010

Clip from RNC ad: “Stop Obama and his union bosses today. The Republican National Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.”

Host Lawrence O’Donnell: “The Republican Party is saying that the President of the United States has bosses, that the union bosses this President around, the unions boss him around. Does that sound to you like they are trying to consciously or subconsciously deliver the racist message that, of course, of course a black man can’t be the real boss?”

“The interesting question is: what is it about this President that has stripped away the veneer of respect that normally accompanies the office of the President? Why do Republicans think this President is unpresidential — unpresidential, and shouldn’t dare to request this kind of thing? It strikes me that it could be the economic times, it could be that he won so big in 2008, or it could be, let’s face it, the color of his skin.”

— MSNBC political analyst and ex-Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe talking about the brief contretemps over scheduling Obama’s speech to Congress, The Last Word, August 31, 2011.

“I get out of all of these things that many of these [Republican] candidates would rather take legislation to build a time machine and go back in time to where we had, you know, no women voting, slavery was cool. I mean, it’s just kind of ridiculous.”

“Plus, what Mitt Romney has in common with the KKK. Details on a rare Romney campaign blunder ahead….So you might not hear Mitt Romney say ‘keep America American’ anymore. That’s because it was a central theme of the KKK in the 1920s. It was a rallying cry for the group’s campaign of violence and intimidation against blacks, gays and Jews.”

— Anchor Thomas Roberts on MSNBC Live, December 14, 2011.

Host Chris Matthews: “How does this guy [Mitt Romney] go from hard right, severely conservative, to this new regular mainstream character he’s portraying himself as?…He ran as a full mooner, Michael. You know, he was saying ‘There’s no such thing as science.’… How can he go from Flat Earth, ‘I don’t believe in evolution,’ to all of a sudden, ‘I’m teaching biology’?… It certainly was in the Grand Wizard crowd over there, okay?”

Former RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “Wait, I resent that! No. Come on, what is this ‘Grand Wizard’ nonsense? Are you saying that we’re Ku Klux Klan?”

Matthews: “Okay, I’m just saying, the far-right party.”

Steele: “Give me a break! Don’t go there with me on that.”

— MSNBC’s Hardball, April 23, 2012.

You notice he [Romney] says ‘anger’ twice. He’s really trying to use racial coding and access some really deep stereotypes about the angry black man. This is part of the playbook against Obama. The other-ization, he’s not like us. I know it’s a heavy thing to say. I don’t say it lightly. But this is niggerization, ‘You are not one of us,’ and that ‘you are like the scary black man who we’ve been trained to fear.’”

— Co-host Touré on MSNBC’s The Cycle, August 16, 2012.

Host Martin Bashir: “Of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s forthcoming oration, can I quote something [to] you? ‘For four years, Barack Obama has been running from the nation’s problems. He hasn’t been working to earn re-election. He’s been working to earn a spot on the PGA tour.’ How about that?”

MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: “Well, we know exactly what he’s trying to do there….These people reach for every single possible racial double-entendre they can possibly find in every one of these speeches.”

— MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, August 29, 2012, talking about McConnell’s speech at the Republican National Convention.

They hate Obama. They want him out of the White House more than they want to destroy al Qaeda. Their number one enemy in the world right now, on the right, is their hatred — hatred for Obama. We can go into that about the white working class in the South, and looking at these numbers we’re getting in the last couple days about racial hatred in many cases. This isn’t about being a better president. They want to get rid of this president. That’s their number one goal and they’re willing to let Romney go to the hard center, even if it’s to the left on issues, as long as they get rid of this guy.”

“I look at Obama as a perfect American. I don’t mean politically. We can disagree left and right on him. You can argue about the drones. Argue about the fiscal policy, all that stuff. But as a citizen. The guy went to school, he never broke a law. He did everything right. He raised a wonderful family. He’s a good husband, a good father. My God I don’t think he’s ever gotten a speeding ticket. The guy does everything right and these right-wingers — and he’s really been pretty moderate on guns until the horror of Newtown — and I don’t know what they’re so afraid of, except that he happens to be black.”

— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, March 6, 2013

What does your study tell you about the nature of the racial piece here of the Tea Party?…Is it sort of a resumption of the Old South, of the way things were before the Civil War, for example? Is it like that old dreamy nostalgia you get in the old movies, Gone With the Wind? Is it that kind of America they want to bring back or what? When there were no gays, where blacks were slaves, Mexicans were in Mexico? I mean, is this what they want?”

The problem is there are people in this country — maybe 10 percent, I don’t know what the number, maybe 20 percent on a bad day — who want this President to have an asterisk next to his name in the history books, that he really wasn’t President….They can’t stand the idea that he is President, and a piece of it is racism. Not that somebody in one racial group doesn’t like somebody in another racial group. So what? It is the sense that the white race must rule. That’s what racism is. And they can’t stand the idea that a man who is not white is President.”

— Chris Matthews appearing as a guest on MSNBC’s PoliticsNation, May 15, 2013

“The IRS is being used in exactly the same way as they tried to use the President’s birth certificate…Despite the complete lack of any evidence linking the President to the targeting of Tea Party groups, Republicans are using it as their latest weapon in the war against the black man in the White House….This afternoon, we welcome the latest phrase in the lexicon of Republican attacks on this President — the IRS. Three letters that sound so innocent, but we know what you mean.”

— MSNBC host Martin Bashir, June 5, 2013.

¦ “At least back in 1939, when Marian Anderson had to sing here, ‘My Country ‘Tis of Thee’ rather than at the Constitution Hall, because — they said the reason was she was black. At least they were honest back then….[Today] you’ve got people talking about nullification of the law of the land [ObamaCare]. You got people talking impeachment like [Senator Tom] Coburn. You got Ted Cruz out there. They never say their problem with Obama is that he’s black, but look at the pattern….At least the Daughters of the American Revolution knew what they were saying and they said it out loud: ‘He’s black, she’s black, she can’t sing here.’ These guys today use all the techniques of nullification and talking about illegitimacy and accusing the President of being a crook, basically, for even being president, because he’s here illegally. And then they talk about impeaching him on grounds they can’t even come up with. At least in the old days they were honest about it. Today, they’re not.”

— Chris Matthews during MSNBC live coverage of the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, August 28, 2013.

¦ “I want to talk today about a controversial word….A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean. The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and to diminish his accomplishments…. Y’all know the word that I’m talking about: ‘ObamaCare.’”

— Host Melissa Harris-Perry on her MSNBC show, December 8, 2013.

Host Ed Schultz compared Tea Party activists to Nazi brownshirts and said that the Republican Party stands for racism; and accused Texas Gov. Rick Perry of referring to Obama in racial terms when he described the national debt as a “big black cloud” hanging over the heads of the American people.

Reporter Lawrence O’Donnell accused Republican U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell of using a “racial double-entendre” when McConnell complained that Obama spends too much time golfing;

Daytime anchor Thomas Roberts famously claimed that Republicans want to go back to a time when “slavery was cool;”

Contributing analyst Toure – so self-important that he goes by only one name – accused Romney of participating in the “niggerization” of Obama;

PRESS: I just think the whole thing is outrageous. I hate this apology, I think it was unnecessary and just, just played right into their hands. And, I mean, they won’t (laughs), they’re not going to let conservatives watch MSNBC, fine! You’re not even going to notice that. How many conservatives, seriously, are watching Ed Schultz or Rachel Maddow, you know, or Al Sharpton every night?

HOLDEN: I want to see how this probation looks and when it ends. (Alluding to RNC chair Reince Priebus’s response to Cheerios ad tweet). And what, you know, is there going to be a soft landing from the probation? This is kind of silly at this point.

PRESS: It is and, you know, first of all, good for Cheerios for bringing that spot back and not bowing into the pressure and as far as this tweet goes, again, “maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everybody else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family,” that’s the truth. That is the truth! The right winger, the racist right winger will hate it. Everybody else will like it. It’s a beautiful spot.

—————————–

Hunter – Daily Kos

MSNBC bending over themselves to apologize for someone in the network thinking the American right wing was made up of people who pore over the nation’s television commercials to find companies acting Not Bigoted Enough is, and there’s no other word for it, pathetic. As are, of course, the predictable reactions from the right wing themselves. You would think that people who get so very, very, very mad whenever someone suggests that they might be bigoted simpletons would be able to go at least one weekend without proving to be exactly that, but no. Never quite works out that way.

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Ron Fournier – Twitter

The GOP argument on Obamacare has more than a whiff of Reagan-era racial “welfare queen” politics —>

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Ron Fournier – Twitter

In light of today’s #Obamacare column, a little background: “How and Why Romney is Playing the Race Card.”

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“There are certain elements of the party who go out of their way to demonize people who don’t look like the way they’d like them to look like or came from some other place,” Powell said. “I think

the party has to deal with this.”

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Markos MoulitsaS

…[T]he GOP has a problem. It can’t win national elections without getting some support from immigrant demographics—Asians and Latinos, the fastest growing in the country. Yet conservatives hate brown and different-looking people. They speak foreign languages and eat weird stuff and play strange music and vote Democratic. Those are all unforgivable sins.

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GERALDO

“What we had here with you and President Obama was a culture class… It was the president of most of the white guys of America, that’s you. And, Barack Obama the president of almost everybody else. And the discussion was at that level… To watch it was some ways unsettling to me… What you did was strip him of his majesty…”

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From An examiner story about congressman Cummings

In fact, the authors of the very report cited by Cummings, Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind also “exposed” alleged links between “certain Tea Party factions and acknowledged racist hate groups,” for the NAACP in 2010, as reported by Jack Cashill at the American Thinker, who writes wryly that Zeskind “could find racists in each of the nine choirs of angels and feel comfortable designating at least three of those choirs as hate groups.”

At the time, Burghart and Zeskind wrote in part that Tea Party members were

”

“defending their special pale-skinned privileges and power.”

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HOWARD FINEMAN (on MSNBC): And as if that’s some kind of explanation, some kind of explanation for the weird phenomenon of the fact that the Republicans didn’t win. There was this extraterrestrial force out there of African-Americans and Hispanics.

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CHarlie Crist – ““Sadly I think another part of it was that he was a Democrat, but not just a Democrat, an African-American.””

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MSNBC interview regarding rejection of union.

WAGNER: – nails this a little bit. And he talks about the UAW has, or the idea of organized labor and finds, y’know, great welcome in NYU and in bastions of sort of liberal, progressive thought. But then when it comes down to it, here you have workers on an assembly line in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who have turned down the option. And he makes a point that, “As many unions have discovered, generally to their woe, the politics of race and culture often eclipse those of class in the United States.” [1]

NOAH: Right.

WAGNER: And these sort of cultural means around unions, um, distracted from the actual economic benefits of them. [2]

NOAH: The South has always been hostile territory for union organizing. Y’know, as Harold said, the culture war in the South trumps the class war. [1] You already have in a number of Southern states right to work laws, which means that even if they had unionized the plants, those who benefitted from the presence of that union wouldn’t have had to pay union dues if they didn’t feel like it.

So you’re in an overwhelmingly hostile climate. And the opposition I gather, through, portrayed this as a kind of northern invasion, a refighting of the Civil War. [3] Apparently there are not a lot of, uh, black employees in this particular plant. [4] And so, that kind of, uh, uh, uh, waving of the Confederate flag was an effective strategy. [5]

WAGNER: That would explain also the sign, “United Obama Workers,” which speaks volumes [6] in terms of the, uh, cultural differences in certain parxts of the country. Author Timothy Noah, thank you as always for your time and thoughts.

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In May 2010, he told guests at a private White House dinner that race was probably a key component in the rising opposition to his presidency from conservatives, especially right-wing activists in the anti-incumbent “Tea Party” movement that was then surging across the country. Many middle-class and working-class whites felt aggrieved and resentful that the federal government was helping other groups, including bankers, automakers, irresponsible people who had defaulted

Harry reid – ““We’re not going to bow to tea party anarchists who deny

the mere fact that Obamacare is the law. We will not bow to tea party anarchists who

refuse to accept that the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is constitutional,”

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Former Wash Post Editor Robert Kaiser

“The base consists principally of white evangelical Christians who, the pollsters tell us, fear that their America is disappearing. Of course they are right; it has probably disappeared already. Their America would not have elected a black president.

”

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From Wash times regarding Obama appointee

A furious Mr. Reid hinted that Republicans’ opposition was based on racism, pointing to to several other black nominees that GOP senators had opposed earlier. But in the case of Mr. Adegbile, his defense of Abu-Jamal was too much for even some Democrats

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Andrew O’Hehir Salon.com

When you think of the face of white rage in America, it belongs to a red-faced Irish dude on Fox News.

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Paul krugman NY Times

Indeed, race is the Rosetta Stone that makes sense of many otherwise incomprehensible aspects of U.S. politics.

We are told, for example, that conservatives are against big government and high spending. Yet even as Republican governors and state legislatures block the expansion of Medicaid, the G.O.P. angrily denounces modest cost-saving measures for Medicare. How can this contradiction be explained? Well, what do many Medicaid recipients look like – and I’m talking about the color of their skin, not the content of their character – and how does that compare with the typical Medicare beneficiary? Mystery solved.

One odd consequence of our still-racialized politics is that conservatives are still, in effect, mobilizing against the bums on welfare even though both the bums and the welfare are long gone or never existed. Mr. Santelli’s fury was directed against mortgage relief that never actually happened. Right-wingers rage against tales of food stamp abuse that almost always turn out to be false or at least greatly exaggerated. And Mr. Ryan’s black-men-don’t-want-to-work theory of poverty is decades out of date.

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Huffington post 8 apr 2014

There has been a long-simmering controversy about whether supporters of the Tea Party are more racially prejudiced than the average American, with some solid public opinion evidence suggesting that they are. However, well beyond the Tea Party hard core, there is evidence that race does play a role.

Is the problem of relentless partisan animus in the Obama era one of lingering racism?

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Candy Crowley: Do you think your Republican colleagues are racist?

DCCC Chairl Steve Israel: Not all of them, no. Of course not. But to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism.

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Pelosi : Racist GOP won’t deal with immigration.

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WAPO article entitled “Democrats are talking about race and the Republican Party an awful lot lately. Is it a smart midterm strategy?”

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The New Republic – The Right’s Racial Blinders What really explains the politics of the Obama era

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Dana Milbank – “Let’s compare Holder to Kathleen Sebelius, who has presided over Obamacare, which is the thing that has most antagonized the Right and the Republicans over all these years. You’re not seeing calls for her impeachment, you’re not seeing the same level of personal vitriol.

I think, that’s why, again, it’s fair to ask the question, and let every individual say why it is that they have that particular antipathy toward this attorney general, toward this president, and why not, say, toward Kathleen Sebelius, who they’re obviously much more at odds with.”

“Baseball great Hank Aaron is catching hell for telling the truth. Actually, the Hall of Famer is catching hell from racists because he had the temerity to point out that racism still exists. Those who think otherwise are delusional and willfully ignorant of the racial state of play in the United States.

Aaron’s alleged offense occurred in a USA Today interview with sports reporter Bob Nightengale. Aaron explained why he still has the racist hate mail he received as he closed in on breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record 40 years ago last week.”

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Hank Aaron

“Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he’s treated. We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go. The bigger difference is back then they had hoods. Now they have neckties and starched shirts.””

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Yahoo news article by Matt Bai

So now it’s out there. After five years of studied reticence (unless they were talking privately to one another or their supporters), Democratic leaders in Washington finally went public last week with what they really think is motivating Republican opposition to Barack Obama. As Steve Israel, one of the top Democrats in Congress, told CNN’s Candy Crowley, the Republican base, “to a significant extent,” is “animated by racism.”

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Leonard Pitts – Indy Star

Race plays part in how Holder, Obama are treated

Jwb10001

And you are a non participant that throws his vote away there by helping to ensure more of the crap you’re complaining about.

Commander_Chico

Yeah, I’m sure those wars with Iran and Russia that Romney would have got us into would make things so much better.

Jwb10001

Yes I’m sure you are the expert on what might have been.

Commander_Chico

All I know is what Romney said.

Jwb10001

And we all know what Obama has DONE. But hey never mind keep throwing your vote away it’s probably better than the alternative.

Apostol v. Gallion, 870 F.2d 1335 (7th Cir. 1989), holds that, once a litigant files a notice of appeal, a district court may not take any further action in the suit unless it certifies that the appeal is frivolous. The district court failed to follow that rule when, despite the notice of appeal filed by several defendants, it entered a preliminary injunction. This court accordingly stays the injunction, and all further proceedings in the district court, until the judge has ruled definitively on the question posed by Apostol.

If the district court concludes that the appeal is non-frivolous with respect to the complaint’s request for injunctive relief under the doctrine of Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123 (1908), then this stay will continue in force until this court has resolved the appeal on the merits.

If the district court concludes that the appeal is frivolous with respect to the complaint’s request for injunctive relief under the doctrine of Ex parte Young, then proceedings in the district court may resume, though appellants would be entitled to renew in this court their request for a stay.

Whether or not the district court determines that the appeal is frivolous, the portions of the injunction that require defendants to return or destroy documents will remain stayed as long as proceedings continue in this court.

The plaintiffs have already filed the motion to get the order modified and the injunction reinstated.